


four things the announcers couldn't know ( and the one thing everyone knew from the start )

by fraud



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Figure Skater AU, M/M, N Things, POV Second Person, Underage Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-14
Updated: 2014-02-14
Packaged: 2018-01-12 07:44:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1183696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fraud/pseuds/fraud
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They comment on your age, your commitment and your anomalous focus, but every athlete here has known this anxious, desperate hope. Your brief and provocative history with Grayson is what makes you different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	four things the announcers couldn't know ( and the one thing everyone knew from the start )

**Author's Note:**

> SUPER self-indulgent figure skating au written in second person. you have been duly warned. the bolded parts are the announcers commenting on d&D’s performance.

> **“They couldn’t have done it any better than that! At least in this moment, none of those numbers or levels matter.”**

At first, the only noise you hear is the wild beating of your own heart. The ragged sound of your lungs greedily dragging air into your body is the only conceivable competition for the roar of blood in your ears. Awareness bleeds back into your senses, like blood stains on the ice, and you’re aware that your hands are shaking, your chest feels tight, and Grayson’s looking at you like he can’t believe you’re real.

You wonder what it means that you’re not entirely sure.

Slowly, the crowd starts to filter in and it takes a moment to understand the deafening cheers echoing through the rink, the impossible image of whole sections of the audience rising from their seats, clapping and leaning over each other to get a glimpse at you—at the both of you.

This is what it feels like to perform flawlessly when it _counts_.

Without warning, Grayson scoops you into a hug that turns into a spin, his arms warm around you and his laughter buried in your neck. Despite the many triple twists, axels, and salchows you’ve been thrown into in the past two minutes, _this_ is what throws your equilibrium off. You can’t recall a time where you were afraid of falling on the ice, but you hold onto him now like you might finally know what that’s like.

“We did it Dami, we _did it_!” He pants, setting you back down on the ice, and you’re almost grateful because there are cameras everywhere. The whole world is watching, and you can’t be held responsible for what this invincible feeling inside of you convinces you to do.

The world doesn’t know, not yet, but you squeeze your partner’s hand as he leads the both of you into a bow, then another, and another, thanking the audience with all the grace and honesty in his heart, and you know that one day they _will_. They will know how you manage to trust this man to fling you into the air with no safety net, how you can skate without checking for him in your peripheral, how you sliced open the wound that never quite healed right and scooped out all the rot of a partnership gone horribly wrong.

For now, the world can see the two of you as competitive equals, and that’s as good a place to start as any. The medal means little to you, you don’t need that kind of validation, but it would go a long way to confirming what you already know. The two of you are unparalleled in every aspect, and _that_ acknowledgement— _that_ is what you want.

He leads you off the ice and distributes embraces as necessary, but all too quickly you’re both being herded to an elevated bench in front of a camera to await your scores. All around you, screens replay the highlights of your short routine, and normally you would see a thousand mistakes, but Grayson’s fingers are threaded through with yours, his thigh pressed to yours from hip to knee, and you have so much hope in your chest that it is almost unbearable.

All you want is to be good enough to give him this.

 

> **“This is the kind of performance you get when you have two naturally talented skaters working together. Every element looks absolutely effortless.”**

When your name first appears in the skating world, you are eight. By eleven, you’ve taken the world of competitive figure skating by storm; no one worth their name in the rink is ignorant of yours. There is even talk of changing the age restrictions to allow you to compete for a national championship title, which would invariably include the potential to represent the US at the Olympic winter games.

This is the year you leave your Mother, furious that she hasn’t moved mountains at your whim, to train with your Father. It is the same year you first meet two-time US national champion, 2004 World silver medalist, Richard “call me Dick” Grayson.

You don’t enjoy his company, or his garish costuming taste, at first.

Four years later, you can at least admit that you enjoy his company.

Even well past his prime, Dick Grayson can only be described as a prodigy. You are well acquainted with the word, having carried the weight of it on your shoulders since you were old enough to strap blades to your feet. But unlike you, Grayson skates with a natural grace that suggests he’s never actually taken the designation to heart. It drives you to endless frustration at first, his effortless choctaws and unsettlingly elegant layback spins—his encouragement and advice in the rink when it _should_ be your Father’s.

His talent brings you a singular vexation; his easy, unbridled joy like that of a child’s. Even when he lands on the wrong edge of his blade and ends up sliding across the ice on his ass, he doesn’t seem to understand the _shame_ in failing. He just laughs and keeps getting up, keeps spinning, keeps improving, keeps smiling.

Many decisions you make at this point are… regrettable.

You don’t start working with him in a pairs skate capacity until he absently leads you into a surprise reverse lasso lift that, you can tell from the way he looks up at you, equal parts surprised and delighted, you both execute flawlessly. He sets you down and says something appropriately constructive, but doesn’t confront your Father with the idea of the two of you attempting a pairs skate until _months_ later. As you understand it now, you have his previous partner to thank for that; the redhead with the injury.

In the beginning, your partnership is rocky at best, and once, at it’s very worst, you lose him entirely. But the media doesn’t know that, and you don’t like to talk about it.

 

> **“Watch how they hold hands here before the triple toe loops. That’s brilliant from a choreography standpoint because it demonstrates how close they are and how tight their formation has to be to pull off this routine.”**

Ice crunches under your blades as you land, and you don’t need the replay to know you’ve nailed the landing. You keep skating, push to finish the routine, because completeness matters to you and there’s no point in celebrating prematurely.

Only once the music dies down, do you allow yourself a moment to bask. It doesn’t matter that you only pulled a double in the second half of the program, because you know exactly how to fix that, and you’ve been working on tightening your triple toe for _days_. Hundreds of toe pick gouges and imperfect landings later, and _this time_ it came so naturally you wonder how you’d ever been having trouble with it in the first place.

He’s by your side in an instant, all bright blue eyes and barely contained excitement.

“You didn’t turn out on your triple toe!” Grayson breathes, and his pride is so real it’s almost catching.

Being short with him takes you more effort than you’d like to admit. 

“Don’t insult me, I never turn out my triple.” You grouch, gliding away from him so he won’t see the corners of your mouth threatening to turn up.

Behind you, his skates skim over the ice, a soft, familiar slice of a sound. “I’m congratulating you here, in case you couldn’t tell.”

As you near the edge of the rink, you twist both blades to the side, shearing the ice in an abrupt dime stop. It’s a crude maneuver, lacking the finesse of your profession, but efficient all the same.

Grayson follows more sedately, always so graceful, as if his body knows no other way to be. He slows himself with a blade positioned behind his leading foot, in a perfect T-stop.

You glance over your shoulder, only briefly, because you’ve always been bold but this easy camaraderie is a different beast entirely. “I didn’t tell you to stop.”

Something in Grayson’s look sharpens, almost imperceptibly, and you would miss it if you were anyone else- but you’re not, you’re his _partner_. Your stomach drops, an uncomfortable feeling you’ve only recently begun to endure, more acutely worried than you’d ever admit at the thought of inadvertently offending him. Apologies claw their way up your throat, awkward little barbed things that get stuck between your professionalism and your prodigious pride.

As quickly as it appeared, it’s gone, Grayson’s face softened by his ubiquitous smile, and you don’t question what it was or where it went because it’s easier not to.

“Yeah, there’s that famed al Ghul humility,” He laughs, not knowing it will strike a nerve.

The problem being, of course, that it does.

You visibly tense, jaw clenching, and you’re immensely gratified you didn’t do anything foolish like _apologize_.

He can’t know that you’re still smarting from the news, which isn’t news yet, but _will_ be all too soon. He can’t know the finality of your mother’s voice casting you out of her favor, a reality you never even considered a possibility until now. You are thankful that he can’t know how the sound of her disappointment, no less cutting for the distance between you, tightens your throat every time you think of it—which is embarrassingly often.

You snatch up your blade guards and shove at the waist-high door trapping you in the rink.

It wouldn’t even be that bad if it was just the Cain girl— she’s young, brutal, and has at least two winter games left in her. She’s at least _worth_ your Mother’s time. It’s the thought of being replaced with your Father’s scraps; the disgraced second son, the broken boy, _Todd_. Leviathan only brings home gold, and the message is clear as if it were carved in your skin.

“Hey- Damian!” Grayson’s hand is a gentle pressure on your shoulder, pleading you to turn around before you storm off the ice. You don’t know why you oblige, just that there’s something dangerous and unkind fluttering in your chest, and you _want_ him to give you a reason to set it free.

“I’m sorry,” He says, with sincerity so unaffected it soothes that warped, aching thing inside of you. “I should have known better.” 

Really, he shouldn’t have, he _couldn’t_ have, but you’re beginning to understand this is just the way he is. Impossibly decent, endlessly considerate, and dwarfed by his implausible expectations of himself. His actions hurt you, and for that reason alone he believes he should have been able to predict it. 

You shrug his hand off, because you’re still unsure you’re allowed to participate in his open affection and it makes you largely uncomfortable to think that you might want to.

“Don’t be.” Setting your blade guards down, you try for something acerbic, the only response to weakness you’ve ever known. “Apologize for your traveling.” 

He looks like he wants to say more, to push past your posturing and ask questions you both know will only ruin the rest of today’s practice. Three weeks from now, he’ll pull you into a hug and you’ll know he knows. You’ll tell him everything and it will leave you raw and hollowed out, as catharsis so often does. He will listen and when you have nothing left to say, he will tell you about his childhood; stories about your Father and times even before him, and against all odds, it will help.

For now, he just nods.

“I’ll work on that on my own time.” He promises, and you know he will. “We should work on presentation while we’ve still got time together.”

“If we must.” You acquiesce, rolling your eyes when he holds his hand out to you.

Your mother thinks you’re wasting your time, throwing away precious years you could be competing solo—but when you take his hand and skate out onto the rink with him…

It doesn’t feel like you’re throwing anything away.

 

> **“You see, right there- because of their considerable height difference, Grayson ends up pulling his partner right up off the ice- that was unintentional and could cause some problems with the judges…”**

When he first wants to kiss you is still a mystery.

You don’t even know the first time the thought occurs to him—he won’t tell you and you suspect this is because he _knows_ the exact moment all too well, and considers it a moment he _shouldn’t_ have associated with wanting to kiss you—but you know the first time _you_ notice it. You remember the shape of his hand on your back like a brand, the look on his face one of conflicted, undeniable want.

You can’t think of it without fighting heat from your cheeks. 

At the time, you think, _these things happen_. Pairs can’t skate well without forming a bond, without trusting all of yourself to your partner, and that can get… complicated. You’ve heard the stories of partnerships gone horribly wrong because of professional and romantic interests clashing. Pairs torn apart by expectation, distraction—jealousy.

You’ve seen the very real aftermath of that look, and it scares you to think of losing all you’ve accomplished with Grayson, of losing _him_ , to something as fickle as desire.

He lets you go, because you’ve betrayed yourself. You’ve revealed your undeniable hesitance, and even a moment lost between two skaters puts you out of sync, robs you of the gold, sends you to your knees before a crowd.

You’ll kick yourself for _months_ after.

Nothing changes and you consider it a testament to how much he values your partnership. No drawn out conversations are had, and you bury the knowledge of his want somewhere deep inside of you. You continue to practice, continue to criticize and be criticized, and sometimes you even let him push sickeningly sweet cocoa into your hands after particularly difficult sets, and you find yourself oddly thankful for his continued attention. How he asks after your weekends. How he seems interested in your petty quarrels with your friends. How he takes into account your feelings and opinions on important and unimportant things alike.

It doesn’t seem worth mentioning when you start to notice the way he laces his skates; all nimble fingers and swift, sure movements. You don’t know what to do when you start to notice the way he smells, clean and sharp, like an expectation lingering in your peripheral. The intense need to perform under his hands, to stretch further, to spin faster, to skate bolder, both startles and excites you.

When you finally figure it out, alone in the locker room, hand fisted in his forgotten hoodie, tights stained in the most embarrassing of ways, you wonder if this is how all good things end; with a whimper, and a lot of regret.

Many months later, you’re practicing lifts and the world is spinning—more slowly than it would if you were practicing out on the ice instead of here, on the sprung wood flooring of the practice room—but you’ve begun to understand this may just be a symptom of being around Grayson. Outside, the rink is being resurfaced under the continual growl of the bright red Zamboni, and you should be concentrating on your extension, on your posture, on anything but the way Grayson’s shoulder feels under your palm as he balances you over his head, but it’s impossible.

You are painfully aware of his palm at your hip. Something like want and fear has been twisting away inside of your chest for what feels like forever, and it makes you look down, into his bright blue eyes and… decide to give in.

In old tights and worn, soft-bottomed socks, you come down out of your split lift. It is a controlled dismount that makes your abdomen burn, and he follows without instruction, because this is what it means to be perfectly in sync. Instead of letting him set you on the floor, you fold your lean legs around his waist and take what you couldn’t all those months ago.

This, you’ll tell yourself later, is why he takes particular enjoyment from lifting you up and pressing you to things—walls, lockers, hallways, mirrors, doors. In reality, you know it’s because he finally _can_ , because he’s _allowed_ to. He’s said, it makes him feel a little more in control of how crazy you make him.

You don’t know if you believe that’s true, but you find yourself hoping it is.

 

> **“They haven’t been skating together very long—not when you consider other pairs like Brown and Drake, or even Cain and Todd—but you just can’t make up chemistry like this. They skate together with the ease of two people who were born to perform together.”**

Waiting for the final tallied score turns out to be the longest 45 seconds of your life.

All around screens are set up to reflect the two of you; Grayson’s blatant hope on open display, your own guarded anticipation a betraying furrow between your brows. Your hand entangled in his like _he_ needs _you_ , when you’re holding on because it’s so clearly the other way around.

They comment on your age, your commitment and your anomalous focus, but every athlete here has known this anxious, desperate hope. Your brief and provocative history _with_ _Grayson_ is what makes you different.

Four years is nothing in the grand scheme of things; pairs have spent longer perfecting routines. Brown and Drake have been skating together for nearly a decade, and even Todd and Cain had their solo careers, but before Grayson, you wouldn’t have given the idea of skating with another person even the briefest of thoughts. With him, you’ve learned so much—not that you’d ever say as much—and it just feels _right_.

Warming up, cooling down, practicing, it doesn’t matter: he chases you across the ice like he lives to do it. He’s been outskating every other person in the rink, a demon unparalleled on the ice, until _you_ came along. Now, you’re the prodigy that casts him into shadow—and somehow he doesn’t blame you. He doesn’t push you out of misplaced resentment or pride, doesn’t lay your faults bare in a false attempt at preparedness; he doesn’t even seem to mind that much when you fall back on these old, decidedly tactless habits.

Looking back now, you know this couldn’t have been any other way. You wouldn’t have waited for another skater to acclimate to your ruthless style, and you would have shred any attempt at handholding to ribbons. Grayson, for all of his insufferable costuming and terrible sense of humor, reminds you how talent should challenge your best and inspire the souls of those around you.

This kind of anticipation is entirely new to you.

He says you are your own worst critic, and you’re inclined to disagree—your Mother and Father vie for that title continuously, in what feels like the only thing they still care to share about you. Growing up you knew the value of every move you made, the importance of a perfect performance in the eyes of those judging you. You’ve never been able to trick your body into skating dumb, not like he can, but skating with Grayson isn’t as straightforward as points and tallies. Skating with Grayson is spectacle and heart and drama and passion; those intimate visceral elements that turn a routine into a performance.

You never knew skating could be like this; the closest to freedom you’ve ever been.

He squeezes your hand, brings you back, and you wish you had his kind of courage. You wish you could tell him how much this means to you, how you could never have come this far without him. But you know your Father is watching, your Mother just across the rink with her claws sunk into second place, and you can only hope he somehow knows what your reciprocal squeeze means.

_We were the best, Richard. No matter what anyone thinks._

A number is called and for a split-second, you don’t recognize what it means. It’s not a perfect score, and you fear you’ll never be rid of that part of your childhood that puts affection and acceptance on a graded scale, but the roaring of the crowd in your ears chases that away. Grayson is out of his seat, throwing his hands into the air, overcome with the news, and elation spills into you, fills you up, overwhelms you until you have to stand up or you’ll risk drowning in it.

Silver isn’t Gold, and you’ll deal with that reality later, but for now you’ll bask in the luxury of the moment. You’ll throw your fists into the air, and accept the pats on your back, and eventually pull him to you. It feels unreal with his arms around you, with this impossible happiness blooming in your chest, but he’s laughing, “ _We did it, we really did it_ ,” in your ear and you want to promise him you’ll work harder next time, but you can’t seem to get it out around the lump in your throat.

You’ll tell him when you get home. When you’re out of the spotlight and it doesn’t feel like something obscenely private.

You’ll promise him the Gold, because you’ve already got everything you could want. 


End file.
